Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

Diary

Christmas – Things can only get better … surely?

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Five Gold Rings by Mo Fanning - Christmas short stories

It’s Christmas! Remember 2019? The worst year ever. Putting politics to one side, it was one of those years that took away too many beloved famous faces. On 31 December 2019, many breathed a sigh of relief and looked forward to something better.

2020 can’t be any worse, we said.

And then it was.

Even if this has been a tough year, I’m trying to focus on the good stuff to come out of it, and about to spend my first Christmas with stairs. I grew up in a bungalow (yet another thing that made me different and subject to name calling at school – kids are so good at finding cracks in our foundation through which to drip poison). I scarpered to my own life aged 19 and ever since, have lived in flats (although I often call them apartments, the word sounds fancier). After losing my mother earlier this year, we’re trapped by lockdown in the house we occupied for the summer. After six months, the place looks less like it belongs to an old lady with a hefty QVC habit, but there are still enough loose covers and silk flowers to sink any kind of post-Brexit fishing trawler.

Christmas is getting out of hand

Mr Fanning commented on how I appeared to be ‘more into Christmas than usual’ this time around. I gave it some thought. I suppose I want to grab any aspect of normal going. If that means turning back the clock to a time when the cold, damp closing weeks of the year featured a decorated tree and a tin of Cadbury’s Roses, so be it. I fear I’ve gone overboard on the presents. Somehow it got out of hand. I started with small things, then bought more small things, one big thing and then another, then a load of medium-sized bits of fabulosity. Stashed at the back of cupboards in a three-bedroom house, it didn’t look much. Entombed in wrapping paper and gathered under said tree, there’s an Imelda Marcos shoe fetish vibe.

Actual writing happened this year. Admittedly, on and off, as I found new ways to distract myself from the job in hand. I’m ending the year with a fifteenth draft of ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ – the first where the story feels true to what I wanted to say. It needs a final check before sending it to the outside world for another mauling and publication. I’ve also revamped ‘Five Gold Rings’ (adding a lockdown story) and seen the collection appear in paperback for the first time. My back catalogue almost all got new covers and new editions. ‘The Armchair Bride’ snuck back into the few bookstores open and back onto websites. I’m ready to resume my stint of story telling.

Stand back

Comedy took a natural backseat, though thanks to a couple of wonderful online workshops – notably one run by the ever brilliant Logan Murray – I connected with some brilliant comics and writers. I’m hoping 2021 sees me forge stronger ties with these new faces. The experience made me think long and hard about standup. Comedy takes so much time to write – even a short ten-minute set. With clubs and pubs shuttered, there’s little chance to work on material. Without audience feedback, standup dies, the words become a bunch of ideas waiting to be tested. Better comics are already waiting to retake their spots on stage. If I take this back up, my stage return won’t be next year.

So… on to 2021.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small will be published in 2021. The Armchair Bride is now available now from all good websites and bookstores. If you’d like to support my work, consider using Patreon.

Grief: A visit to the museum

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My Mother

My mother died in February. At the time, the virus that now traps us in our homes was little more than a rumble. Second or third story on the news, rendered insignificant by reports of heavy rain or Boris Johnson’s latest infidelity. We were lucky in many ways. We had the funeral she planned, she left us surrounded by the people she loved. For a week or two, I lingered and tried to turn her silent house back into a home, finally admitting defeat and driving back to Brighton.

Then came lock-down.

Grief cannot be neatly portioned into two weeks or one month. It comes and goes.

Mine was placed on hold.

This weekend, I’ll return to the Midlands – with written police permission – to turn her museum into something new. I’ll buy three rolls of bin bags and fill them with precious photographs, ornaments, perfumes, Tupperware boxes, handbags and headscarves.

In the days and weeks that carried us through to her passing away, my temper often frayed. I grew frustrated and angry not just at her illness, but at those around me trying to help. If a cup found its way into the wrong cupboard or someone dared vacuum a rug, I lashed out. Listening for any unexpected sounds, I lay awake, knowing  that calling 999 was no longer an option. All my go-to numbers were mobile phones, people trained to deal with death.

I’m unsure how seeing her home again will change me. It would be easy to settle back to the grieving process.

I know what she’d rather happened, and plan to do everything in my power to bring life back to a too-long empty house.

Marie CurieGetting help

Grief is a natural response to losing someone you care about. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. Everyone’s experiences of grief are individual. The important thing is to do what feels right for you. I would have struggled without the support of Marie Curie nurses. In the memory of my mother, we asked that there be no flowers at her funeral, rather donation to the organisation.

Read: Grieving in your own way

 

How’s your lockdown going?

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Lockdown

How’s your lockdown going?

I’m borderline depressed. So I don’t plan on ending my lockdown life … or doing anything with it.

I haven’t learned another language or finished work on my next book.

Each day, the government issues press briefings; shit sandwiches where the bread is also made of shit.

If you go on Twitter and post something innocent like “Baking banana bread is brilliant”, within one minute a total stranger hits back with “My sister is a coeliac and this is a harmful view”, while someone else adds, “Your silence about croissants is telling”

Facebook needs a “we all know you’re not really this happy, Karen” button. Most newspaper websites feature user comments that read like Mein Kampf on shuffle.

I keep reading how the hardest part of lockdown is missing someone you saw every day. As far as I’m concerned, not having to sit opposite Pam with halitosis is more a blessing than a curse.

To keep things normal while working from home, I leave passive-aggressive notes when mugs don’t make it into the dishwasher. I’ve put all our food into sweaty plastic tubs and written my name on the outside.

I’ve never been one for sunbathing. While everyone else cultivates new moles to worry over, I’m happier indoors. My latest hobbies involve watching porn and making up dialogue, and reading reviews for places I can never go eat.

But, all of this should be over in time for Brexit, when we get to spend the next 20 years eating fox meat in an abandoned Debenhams on the outskirts of Inverness.

Five lockdown whinges

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Lockdown

Lockdown: You know how everyone has up-days and down-days? And during this pandemic, they’re only too ready to tell you all about it? Today is my depression down-day. And yes, you’ve most likely read the same self-indulgent nonsense from a hundred other people, but it’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.

These are my five reasons not to be cheerful. I share them hoping that by getting them off my chest, depression will lift. And if you recognise how yourself in these words, you’ll feel better too.

What’s the point in writing a book?

Since lockdown, every vaguely sentient being has decided it’s time they found that one book that supposedly lives inside us all. WTF! There’s already enough competition. If every actor, comic, singer or lead guitarist now thinks this is their moment to shine, what chance is there for a mid-table writer with a feisty new RomCom in the works?

Is my book historical fiction?

I’ve been working on ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ for the best part of a year. I’m editing a story written pre-lockdown. People hang out together. they kiss. Love happens. At one point there’s a very messy three-way bedroom scene (not what you’re thinking). Do I tweak scenes to imply contact? What will the new normal (TM) look like? If I started over, would I write a very different story? Most of what I know is the comedy of interaction. Am I past my sell-by date?

Even without distractions, I’m not writing

I can no longer blame my sluggish pace on lunch invitations or meeting mates for coffee. Or shopping. I’m on furlough from my proper job, and  that means eight weeks of time to write. I figured If I got up early, sat down at nine and worked through, I’d soon complete ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’. Instead, I’ve picked a perfectly good plot to pieces, and spent days staring at the same piece of dialogue. That’s when I’m not hoovering, baking bread, polishing mirrors, washing windows, ironing, sitting down for a cup of tea, watching a box set or reading the news …  or Facebook … or Twitter. Long story short, even with zero distractions, targets whoosh past.

What if I lose my proper job?

I can’t be alone in letting this fear fill my every waking minute. How can anyone write when they might end up having nothing left to do but write?

When all of this started, we told ourselves lockdown might last two to three months. Now we’re looking at the rest of this year. Maybe longer. And how many companies can afford to pay their staff until then?

As any writer will tell you, books don’t buy you much in the way of a life. Unless you’re already rich and famous … and then they absolutely do.

People annoy me – even more now we can’t mix

Thursday at 8pm should be a time for communal joy. The first time our nation clapped for carers, I was moved. Genuinely. My cold dark heart thawed. By week eight, the magic is gone. There’s an element of: if you don’t clap, you hate nurses and deserve to die. The ageing homo who lives above, blasts Vera Lynn from his beat box while the students two doors down take a break from what sounds like a constant state of virtual pub quiz. And when I see politicians who only three months earlier were busy selling off ‘our NHS’ clap their money-grabbing hands, my head hammers.

Having shared my five-item list, a weight has lifted. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll knuckle back down and tidy the words back into pages and into chapters and then a book.

Be kind.

That’s really all we have.

COVID-19: The end of gay life as we know it

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COVID-19

Thanks to COVID-19 – aka Corona – the world is on a massive duvet day, albeit one with the added risk of a slow, lingering death. Alone, eaten by a cat.

Literally the only thing anyone wants to talk about these days is self isolation. It’s like when people at work show you pictures of their children. I can’t find a way to care less. I’m an introvert with OCD tendencies. Being told to stay indoors and wash my hands every few minutes is bliss.

We’re supposed to club together and remember the blitz.

Any gay man old enough to actually remember the blitz is a Brexit-voting, property-hogging panic-shopper who lies about their age.

During the blitz, people went to their beds not knowing if their house would be standing in the morning. I lie awake worrying I paid too much for hand sanitiser in that frenzied eBay auction that got out of hand.

COVID-19 is anti-gay

They say a virus doesn’t discriminate. That’s not true. COVID-19 hates the gays and could mean the end of LGBTQ life as we know it.

2020 Grindr has become a shirtless LinkedIn.

There’s talk of cancelling the Eurovision Song Contest. We’re nothing without gay Christmas.

Single gay men will retreat behind closed doors, only to emerge blinking into the light come August, holding up an arthritic claw and declaring they’ve completed Pornhub.

What matters most is losing contact with our straight friends. Without your Primark mistakes to mock, we become empty vessels. Spare a thought for your Gay BFFs. Send selfies and demand feedback.

We’ll meet again.